It was never supposed to get complicated. You and Dean weren’t a couple. You were hunters. Friends, maybe. Partners, sometimes. And in the quiet moments between cases, between bloodshed and bruises, you fell into bed together.

No promises. No strings. That’s what you agreed to.

But somewhere along the line, it stopped being just about convenience. You started waiting for his texts. He started leaving you coffee on the nightstand. You started sleeping in. He stopped seeing other people. But neither of you ever said anything. Neither of you dared to ask what it meant.

Until one night, after a particularly brutal case, you walk into his motel room like you’ve done a hundred times before… and it feels different.

Dean’s already there, leaning against the table, not looking at you. His knuckles are bruised. He hasn’t taken off his jacket. There’s an unopened bottle of whiskey on the table — but no second glass.

You know something’s wrong. You can feel it in your chest before he even opens his mouth.

The space between you has never felt so far.

“This is the last time,” he said after a long beat, voice low, rough around the edges like gravel underfoot. “We… can’t keep doing this.”

No fight. No fire. Just quiet finality.

You stood in the doorway, your own jacket still clinging to your skin, rain from the walk across the lot soaking into your sleeves. You forced your voice to stay steady. “Why now?”

He didn’t answer right away. Just stared down at the drink in his hand, then set it aside like it no longer mattered.

“It’s getting too hard,” he finally said. “Too easy to forget this was supposed to be nothing.”

You watched him, taking in the way his shoulders sagged under the weight of everything unsaid. He wouldn’t look at you—not fully. Like maybe if he did, he’d take it all back.

“We said no strings,” he added, almost like he was reminding himself.

You nodded. “Yeah. We did.”

But something in your chest pulled tight. You hadn’t realized until now how much you’d started to need this—him. The late-night conversations half-buried in laughter and breathless moans. The way he looked at you like you were the only quiet thing in his world. The way he always reached for your hand after, even in sleep.

You swallowed hard, but the lump in your throat stayed. “Is this what you really want?”

His silence was heavy. Too long. Too painful.

“I don’t know,” he said eventually. “But I know I can’t keep doing this if we’re just gonna pretend it’s casual when it’s not.”

That was the closest he’d come to admitting it—that it had meant something. That you meant something.

The motel room stayed silent, save for the soft hum of the flickering neon outside. You looked at him—really looked at him—and saw a man caught between what he wants and what he thinks he deserves.